Alumni News

Williams Found ‘Special Spirit’ at Creighton School of Medicine

When September Williams, MD’84, was a girl, the medical drama series Ben Casey, was her favorite television show. At that time, being a physician was not on her radar, but the scripts the TV doctor and his colleagues followed planted seeds in her.

Williams, a physician, clinical medical ethicist and filmmaker, has combined her interests into a multi-faceted career. As an attending physician at the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center, Williams has an impressive resume in internal medicine, geriatrics, palliative care and clinical medical ethics. But there is more to the Creighton School of Medicine graduate than remarkable medical credentials. In 1978, having just completed her bachelor’s degree in science, which she had financed through writing, dancing and photography, Williams was faced with her grandfather being terminally ill. She was impressed by the care he received from oncology intern/ writer/actress Lynn Baker, M.D., in Los Angeles. Williams’ grandfather died of cancer, but his end-of-life process launched her medical career. “I took the MCAT on the day of my grandfather’s memorial service,” she said.

“I went into medicine for the same reason I later went into clinical medical ethics and film,” Williams related. “I wanted to have a way to enhance the humanity around caring for people with life-threatening illnesses. I also wanted the tools to convince people there are ways to prevent getting some life-threatening illnesses.”

Like Williams, Baker also had a dual arts-science background. As a mentor, Baker recommended Creighton as an environment that would embrace Williams’ atypical cross-disciplinary talents. Williams trusted Baker’s assessment, in part, because Sandra Organ, the first African-American ballerina of the Houston Ballet and daughter of the renowned former Creighton chief of surgery the late Claude Organ, MD’52, MSM’57, had danced at Creighton.

Williams said when she arrived at Creighton, “Things stood out,” in her professors and her fellow students. “Creighton people were, as a group, remarkably kind and humane. There was a special spirit of cooperation and support.”

Residency in internal medicine at Cook County Hospital in Chicago and a surgical nutrition support fellowship focused Williams’ interest in bioethics. It was her fellowship at the University of Chicago’s MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics that spawned her pursuit of filmmaking. She began to explore the impact of film and non-print media on cross-cultural expectations of medicine and science. She next studied in master’s programs in directing and screenwriting at Columbia College Chicago and screenwriting at Boston University.

Williams’ public-medicine career of 25 years is symbiotic with her film work. She is committed to providing best practice to the sickest, poorest patients. Her film work, through Ninth Month Productions, gives voice to those most affected by lack of access to care, the need for appropriate use of technology and the application of bioethics in medicine.

Williams has been a consultant to filmmakers and television directors, producers and writers. She has appeared in, and provided research for, movies and television programs, including Frontline, AIDS Report and Nightline. She has consulted with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Harvard AIDS Institute, among others. Along with feature film scripts and shorter pieces, she is the writer/director of the medically based short films Shared Decisions, A Conversation on Moral Intuition, Dance for Joy and the feature-length documentary When We Are Asked, the source material for The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded APPEAL project (A Progressive Palliative Care Educational Curriculum for the Care of African-Americans at Life’s End). She is submitting several scripts to the Sundance programs this year.

“We need to communicate that palliative care is part of medicine — that medicine is not just curative. Medicine has to promote health, cure, and when it’s time, prepare people for life’s end,” Williams said. “Creighton was already ahead in teaching end-of-life care in the early ‘80s. End-of-life care is a natural extension of faith-based education.

“When is it appropriate to stop medicine based on curative care and start medicine that is based on palliative care? It is sometimes hard to say, but as a filmmaker-physician- clinical ethicist, I work on communication tools that strive to say it better.”